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Interpreting Moral Doctrine: Newman on Conscience and Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Gerard Magill
Gerard Magill*
Affiliation:
Saint Louis University
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Abstract

The religious epistemology of John Henry Newman offers an avenue, unexplored by scholars, for interpreting moral doctrine today. Although he did not write any work on moral theology, a systematic account of the interaction between conscience and moral law in his writings can illumine foundational concerns about personal morality and episcopal authority in the Roman Catholic Church. In reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment Newman had remarkable confidence in the capabilities and trustworthiness of the personal, historical reasoning of individuals and ecclesial communities alike—a type of reasoning that he recognized as the driving force for the genesis and the application of moral law. Not surprisingly, his concern for historical moral consciousness, with its emphasis upon subjectivity, generated a significant shift from abstractness to concreteness in theological method, a shift that would later influence the thought of Bernard Lonergan. To illustrate the contemporary relevance of Newman's commitment to personal reasoning in theology, his explanation of the legitimate authority of conscience and doctrine provides the basis for an instructive critique of the document On the Interpretation of Dogmas (1989) from the International Theological Commission.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , Spring 1993 , pp. 7 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1993

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References

1 Newman's University Sermons: Fifteen Sermons Preached before the University of Oxford, 1826-43, with introductory essays by MacKinnon, D. M. and Holmes, J. D. (London: SPCK, 1970)Google Scholar, noted as Sermons.

2 Newman, John Henry, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, foreword by Ker, Ian (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989)Google Scholar, noted as Development.

3 Newman, John Henry, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, edited with an introduction by Ker, I. T. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985)Google Scholar, noted as Grammar. References are to Newman's final edition (1889).

4 Newman, John Henry, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864), edited with an introduction by Svaglic, M. J. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967)Google Scholar, noted as Apologia.

5 Newman, John Henry, On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, edited with an introduction by Coulson, John (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1961)Google Scholar, noted as Consulting. This was originally published in the Rambler 1 (07 1859): 198–230Google Scholar, and reprinted with revisions as an appendix to the 1871 third edition of The Arians of the Fourth Century (London: Longmans and Green, 1901), 445–68.Google Scholar

6 Newman, John Henry, “A Letter Addressed to the Duke of Norfolk on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone's Recent Expostulation” in Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching (London: Longmans and Green, 1885), 2:171–378Google Scholar, noted as Norfolk.

7 Newman, John Henry, The Via Media of the Anglican Church, edited with an introduction and notes by Weidner, H. D. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), xv–xcivGoogle Scholar, see esp. xl-xli. This reference is to Newman's final edition (1889).

8 For a selection from the literature, see Griffin, John R., Newman: A Bibliography of Secondary Studies (Front Royal, VA: Christendom Publications, 1980), 97–99.Google Scholar

9 In a recent study of Newman on conscience (Conscience in Newman's Thought [Oxford: Clarendon, 1989]Google Scholar), S. A. Grave examines the authority of conscience (chaps. 4 and 5) rather one-sidedly by discussing the meaning of the collision between conscience and the infallible authority of the Pope (145-48) with no discussion of the relevance of Newman's basic religious epistemology for understanding the interaction between conscience and moral law.

10 On the interaction between natural law and faith, see Gallagher, John A., Time Past, Time Future: An Historical Study of Catholic Moral Theology (New York: Paulist, 1990), 81–84Google Scholar, and Mahoney, John, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 184–93.Google Scholar

11 Newman, John Henry, The Idea of a University, edited with an introduction and notes by Ker, I. T. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976)Google Scholar, noted as Idea. References are to Newman's final edition (1889). Also, see my essay, “Newman on Liberal Education and Moral Pluralism,” Scottish Journal of Theology 45 (1992): 45–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 The Textual Appendix to the Grammar, 341 (Ker's pagination, emphasis added). Here, Ian Ker lists the variant readings between the first (1870) and final edition (1889).

13 For a philosophical explanation of the legitimacy of the distinction between inference and assent as two different modes of affirming truth, see Ferreira, M. Jamie, Doubt and Religious Commitment: The Hole of the Will in Newman's Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 78–84.Google Scholar I have argued elsewhere that Newman was an insightful philosopher of knowledge, despite his unsystematic approach (“Imaginative Moral Discernment: Newman on the Tension between Reason and Religion,” The Heythrop Journal 32 [1991]: 493–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For a broader perspective on the philosophical plausibility of Newman's epistemology, especially with regard to the challenge of the Enlightenment, see Ferreira, M. Jamie, Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt: The British Naturalist Tradition in Wilkins, Hume, Reid, and Newman (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 145–226.Google Scholar

14 This distinction between absolute and universal differs from Aquinas's understanding of universal laws as absolute because they are formal (not dealing with particular actions). When Newman considers material moral laws (dealing with particular actions) as absolute, it is because they may elicit assent: they are not universal laws, but only apply in general, or as Aquinas said, “valent ut in pluribus” (Summa Theologica, I-II, q.94, a.4).

15 In a theological paper written in 1863 Newman made a similar remark: “The truth is consistent… but the consistent need not be true” (The Theological Papers of John Henry Newman on Faith and Certainty, ed. Achaval, H. M. and Holmes, J. D., with an introduction by Dessain, C. S. [Oxford: Clarendon, 1976], 114).Google Scholar

16 Lonergan, Bernard, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1975), 251, 238Google Scholar, and Insight (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1958), 92.Google Scholar

17 Lonergan, , Insight, 604.Google Scholar I develop Newman's view of conscience in my essay, “The Living Mind: Newman on Assent and Dissent” in Discourse and Context: An Interdisciplinary Study of John Henry Newman, ed. Magill, Gerard (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

18 McCormick, Richard A. S.J., The Critical Calling: Reflections on Moral Dilemmas Since Vatican II (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1989), 9, 14, 177.Google Scholar

19 Newman, , Development, 190.Google Scholar

20 James J. Walter emphasizes (without referring to Newman) the centrality of both of these points in the modern debate (“The Foundation and Formulation of Moral Norms” in Curran, Charles, ed., Moral Theology: Essays in Honor of Richard McCormick [New York: Paulist, 1990], 128Google Scholar).

21 For example, Richard M. Gula insightfully describes moral norms as “the moral memory of the community” (Reason Informed by Faith: Foundations for Catholic Morality [New York: Paulist, 1989], 284Google Scholar).

22 Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1963), 2:221.Google Scholar

23 The “living” and “active” elements of conscience refer to his argument of convergence as the condition for certitude: argued that from the “accumulation of various probabilities,… we may construct legitimate proof, sufficient for certitude” (Grammar, 411).

24 For example, Richard M. Gula explores the need for refining moral law because, he argues, its formulations are “of necessity historically and linguistically conditioned” (Reason Informed by Faith, 296).

25 McCormick, , The Critical Calling, 9, 16.Google Scholar

26 Origins 20/1 (05 17, 1990): 1–14.Google Scholar This document was prepared under the direction of Bishop Walter Kasper, then theological professor at the University of Tübingen, and approved by a large majority during the commission's plenary session in October 1989, including Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, president of the commission.

27 On the Interpretation of Dogmas, C, I:3.

28 Ibid., A, I:4.

29 Ibid., A, II:1.

30 Ibid., A, II:3. The foundation of this stance in official Catholic teaching can be found in “The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church,” no. 25, and in “The Declaration on Religious Freedom,” no. 14; see Abbott, Walter M., ed., The Documents of Vatican II (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1966).Google Scholar

31 On the Interpretation of Dogmas, C, II:4.

32 Ibid., C, III:2. Earlier, the document also explains that “the Spirit awakens and nourishes the sensus fidelium” (C, II:1).

33 This is an editorial remark by Newman indicated in a letter from John Gillow to Newman as editor of the Rambler, May 12,1859 (Newman, John Henry, Letters and Diaries, ed. Dessain, C. S. [London: Nelson, 1969], 19:129Google Scholar).

34 See Coulson's, Introduction in On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, 23.Google Scholar

35 On the Interpretation of Dogmas, C, III:1 and 5.

36 Ibid., C, III:5.

37 See Ker's, Foreword in Newman, , Development, xxi.Google Scholar

38 Morgan, Drew Philip, “Hermeneutical Aspects of John Henry Newman's Essay ‘On the Development of Christian Doctrine,’” Horizons 16/2 (1989): 223–42, esp. 241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 See Ker, Ian, John Henry Newman: A Biography (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), 18–27Google Scholar, and Gilley, Sheridan, Newman and His Age (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990), 43–44.Google Scholar

40 Newman, , Development, 383.Google Scholar

41 See, e.g., Hammond, David, “Imagination and Hermeneutical Theology: Newman's Contribution to Theological Method,” Downside Review 106 (1988): 17–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and my essay, “Moral Imagination in Theological Method and Church Tradition: John Henry Newman,” Theological Studies 53 (1992): 1–25.Google Scholar

42 On the Interpretation of Dogmas, C, III:2.

43 An example of an abstract interpretation of Natural Law can be found in the Vatican document on invitro fertilization, “Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation” (1987), introduction no. 3-4, section II, B, no. 4-6.